


A Debt to Pay

by RABunzai



Category: Black Widow (Comics), Hawkeye (Comics), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - A Song of Ice and Fire, Canon-Typical Violence, F/M, Fantasy, Friendship, Mild Sexual Content, Minor Character(s), POV Natasha Romanov
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-12
Updated: 2017-03-12
Packaged: 2018-10-03 04:50:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,043
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10236269
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RABunzai/pseuds/RABunzai
Summary: “The God of Death has marked you child, from today you must serve.”An archer and a faceless woman travel Westeros. There is a tourney, a war and a debt.





	

 

 

She was made from flame or so He tells her. She was born during the Doom, found only when the firestorms had settled and a few brave fishermen ventured back into Valyria’s harbors. They had spotted her walking naked amidst the ashes, the world around her melted and burned but her skin was flawless like polished steel. Her hair was a vibrant red, the color of blood, the color of fire, the color of the Valyrian Sky. They searched for days and found no other living soul, just a girl shaped by flame.

She does not remember Valyria and the death and the doom. She simply remembers the Captain’s heavy hand on her shoulder as he nudged her up stone steps. He handed her over to a man in a black and white robe for one solitary coin. She stood in the fog, watched the ship retreat beneath the Giant’s feet and He leant down and whispered. “The God of Death has marked you child, from today you must serve.”

She starts out as a flame, flickering, small and hungry. And then she serves.  
“A girl is like a forest fire.” He tells her later. She shakes her head. A forest fire is wild, uncontrolled.  
“No, a girl is like dragon’s breath.”

 

***

A girl is sent to serve across the narrow sea. She spends time as Helly and Lanna, as Merry and Sonia. Each time a different face and name but always underneath the fire burns.

She is Sarah when she gives the gift to a Lord. A woman who is not a scullery maid dabs Widow's blood along the rim of his cup and waits two days until the castle bell tolls. The Lord’s sons cry murder (and they should know) and the castle guard’s start their search in the kitchens.

She changes faces as she walks through the courtyard. Sarah was loud and brash with a flat nose and straw hair. Sarah spun her tales to anyone with an ear. Sarah has a vile of Widow's blood in her pallet. Sarah will be looked for but never found.

In the commotion its so easy to become Nila the stable girl, to look weak and mousy, to slip past men who are looking for a killer.

“You should be back in the kitchens.” The voice catches her by surprise; she heard no footsteps behind her. She spins around but there is nothing but empty air and it takes her a moment to realize the words are coming from above. She looks up and there he is, someone else’s soldier sitting listlessly on the stone capping of the battlements, twirling an arrow in his hand.  
“Sorry Sir but you must be mistaken, I only work in the stables.” She ducks her head shyly, puts a tremble in her hands, she is truly just a stable girl and the yelling from the yard is frightening her.  
There is a hollow sound of wood sliding into leather and then a body falling through air. He lands almost silently on the earth below.  
“You’re the scullery maid they’re looking for. I know it’s you by that red hair. Can’t miss a color like that.”  
That isn’t right, she thinks. The face she is wearing has hair as brown as mud. She looks at him again, really looks and sees the calluses on his fingers, scars on his skin, the lines of his arms that speak to hard work and force. This one is dangerous.  
“You have good eyes,” she grits, letting a hand inch closer to the blade hidden on her thigh.  
“It’s in the name. They call me Hawkeye.” And suddenly she is looking at the tip of an arrow. Fast, so fast. She stills the hand that is almost at her blade.  
“I see that too. Raise your hands, you and me are going for a walk.” He nods back towards the castle where men lead the hunt for a killer.  
She does not move, he is fast but she wonders briefly who is faster.  
“Trust me, I can loose this arrow faster than you could think to go for that knife.” His voice is low, rough like stone on stone. She raises her hands, keeps them held high. He is not lying.

 

***

Hawkeye may have good eyes but the commander does not. He looks at the archer behind a veil of discontent and then places her in a cell with a promise to fetch the stable master to speak for her. The night settles in and when no one comes she suspects the commander has dismissed her for larger concerns.

She waits in the darkness of the cells. Sometime before the dawn she is stirred by new movement in the ground, the air around her turning dry and arid. A war horn blares, the sound echoing against the walls and then the castle is alive, rocking with the footsteps of men rushing to its gates.

She listens to hoof beats, to screams and to the snapping of flame. When black smoke starts to invade her prison and the jailer abandons his post, that is enough for her to pull a needle from her shoe and begin working the lock of her cell. War, it must be war.

A heat grows and spreads in her cage, the men in the other cells become rabid, throwing themselves against the bars, some trying to dig under the iron. They know what she knows. No one will come for them. The castle is burning and fire makes cowards of the bravest men. She remains working on the lock of her cell, the smoke obscuring her vision, the heat coursing through the bars burning her fingers. The other men are howling now, the flames licking at their skin. She twists and turns the lock. Try as she might she cannot down the final pin. She breathes in smoke, coughs and loses the needle between her fingertips.

The heat wraps her up, presses in and squeezes.  
Is this how she will die, given back to the flames? It feels right. It feels hot and painful, like a long awaited gift. She scrunches her eyes tight and does not fight the hands that take hold of her and drag her into the fire.

 

She wakes to ice…no that’s not right. She wakes to his eyes, a deep blue like the middle of a frozen lake.  
“Oh good, I thought you dead,” he rasps, rocking back on his feet and away so that she can now see the dark sky above. She feels the cold dirt underneath her, sees the wind blowing the leaves on the trees, still feels the heat branded on her palms. She breathes…  
“What did you do?” It comes out as a whisper, her throat rubbed raw and ash in her mouth. He shrugs large shoulders and takes a swig of a water skin.  
“I’m the one who put you there, didn’t seem right to leave you.”

 

***

The castle burns. Hawkeye looks at her long and hard amidst the glow and then sets her free.

She follows him.  
“What are you doing?”  
“I owe you a debt.”  
“Do I look like the crown? You don’t owe me no debt.”  
She shakes her head and then stops, the movement making her dizzy. “You stole a life from the Red God,” she says, _her life_. “I owe a debt. Speak a name, any name and I will offer it back to him.”  
His pace slows; he turns, fingers tightening on his bow. There is something that flickers across his face, casts shadows in his eyes and then it’s gone. “No.” He growls and walks away. Again she follows.

He travels the Gold Road. She follows him as Sharna, a woman with hair as black as ink and a walk that glides across the ground. He picks her out amongst the throng of travelers with a glare that does nothing to deter her. She follows as Lya, a child running along the edges of the track, begging for scraps and singing softly. He raises a brow and shakes his head. She follows him as Bryn, a young squire still more boy than man on a horse she stole from a farmer’s paddock. At a bend near Deep Den he walks up beside her mount and sighs.  
“You won’t stop?”  
“I owe a debt.”  
“You can’t owe it somewhere else?”  
“Do you have somewhere else to be?”  
He huffs something between a grunt and a laugh and then looks at her, blue eyes a little less harsh in the fading light.  
“I’m going to the Vale for a tourney. If you’re so intent on coming how about you put that horse back and walk beside me.”  
It’s a truce or a trap. She watches him from atop the horse, tries to see the truth in his words. His stance is tired and a little wary. The cold air has dried the sweat on his skin and his breathing is hard and deep. His tone hides no malice though and the lines of his face look almost hopeful.  
“I’ll return the horse and travel with you, and when we reach the tourney you will give me a name.”  
His smile is the kind that tugs at the corner of his mouth. “I won’t.”  
“You will,” she says and dismounts. “They all give in at the chance to play a God.”

 

***

The archer travels like the autumn winds, gently moving across the land, lingering just so. He stops to help pull wagons from the mud, wrangle a farmers herd back into its paddock, feed the stray mutts that roam the tracks. She asks him why when he receives no coin or trade in return, but he just offers a sad smile.

She is curious, she has seen kindness in Westeros but never from a man whose skin tells the tale of its opposite.

 

***

Watching him with his bow is like watching the bravos dance by night along the Moon Pool. It’s captivating and dangerous and beautiful. He practices often, in the light of the morning and the depths of night. He does not miss, not once and its not from luck or prayer. It’s from a lost youth, blistered fingers, and lessons left as bruises.  
“Are those your eyes?” She asks. He’s aiming at a tree that even she cannot see but she doesn’t doubt that he hits it every time. She has heard stories of those who steal the eyes of animals and use them to see in ways that others cannot. She wonders if that’s how he does it. How he sees through every face she wears.  
“Of course,” he lowers his bow and turns to her, confusion and amusement spreading across his features. “Why?”  
“You see me.”  
“Should I not see you?”  
She shakes her head. “Not like this.”

 

***

“Have you a name for the Red God?”  
She has asked this question for the past three nights and the past three nights he has told her no. She does not expect an answer tonight but she must still ask. She must still serve.  
He doesn’t look up from where he sharpens an arrow but his fingers pause on the tip when he says, “what about yours?”  
She blinks. For a moment she thinks he means to give her life to the Red God but looking at his eyes she sees they are soft, his head tilted just so and she realizes that is not what he wants.  
He presses on. “I take it your name’s not Nila.”  
She does not frown because she has been trained better but her mind bristles at his line of questioning. “Nila will do.”  
“Nah, it doesn’t feel right. You have a true name?” He asks it so nonchalantly, sitting against a tree making a face as he cuts his finger on the tip of his arrow. It’s like he doesn’t recognize the words he found, the question he shaped and how it pokes and prods at her insides.  
“I’ve never had a name, not that way.” She had simply been called girl in Braavos when she did not have another name and face to be.  
He sucks on his wounded finger and gives her that soft look again. “Do you want one?”  
No, a girl does not want. A flame does not want. “No,” she says and makes it sound like a promise.

 

***

“When I was a boy, I trained to be an archer in a mummer’s troupe.”  
She looks at him. He’s lying on dew-covered grass, boots unlaced and arms tucked behind his head. His eyes are open and focused to the sky but she looks the way she has been trained and sees he’s far away, lost to time and memory.  
“Some days the whole troupe would stop. O’l Carson would drink our coin at the nearest Inn. Barn-” a pause, a wince, then he continues, “-my brother and me were the youngest and were told to stay with the wagons. We’d lay on the grass just like this, me and him, picking shapes in the clouds, counting squirrels in the trees.”

He is lying beside her but he is far away and she does not like the sadness in his voice. He’s lost to something she’s never known. She has no memories of her childhood but…she was once a girl named Nym whose father was Bosso the Catfisherman. She would spend her mornings waiting for him to bring his catch back to the Purple Harbor. When he was late she would sit on the wooden jetty, her feet dangling over the edge and count up all the different fish that passed beneath.

Carefully she lies back in the grass, shuffles so that her side is pressed against his. She points to the clouds and says, “that one looks like a shield.”

 

***

They come upon a weirwood tree outside of Hornvale. In the fading light she traces the cracks and crevices of its scowl, contorts her face to try and match its angry expression. A light shower has left water running like tears down its scarred face, pooling in its mouth. She traces the lines with a fingertip, considers it briefly before slowly edging a hand into the dark hollow.  
“Hruh!” The archer shouts behind her and she flinches but does not remove her hand. She turns to glare at him but he is grinning, his eyes alight and playful. He leans in and bumps her shoulder. School your face, she thinks, and she stamps down her own smile.

 

***

She dances sometimes. He watches her carefully while she spins, turns on her toes and uses his eyes as an anchor.  
_Spin_. She is as light as a feather.  
_Spin_. She is as fierce as a wolf.  
_Spin_. She is soft and smooth, like silk on skin.  
_Stop_. She is exposed and raw.  
“I was a water dancer once,” she whispers, a rare truth.  
“Now you’re an assassin.” He nods to the knives that lay out before her. She follows his gaze and shakes her head; the movement sends a lock of red hair tumbling down her back.  
“It’s all the same dance.”

 

***

“Someone cut them down years ago,” he says, watching as she runs her fingers over splintered wood. There are thirty-one stumps on the hill. She knows because she walked around in the dying light and counted each one.  
“My brother says the giants tore them all down but that’s a lie. More likely some old Lord was looking to win a war.”  
There is a strangeness to his tone and something else that swims beneath. It all starts and ends with one word and so she asks, “what is his name? This brother who tells you lies.”  
He stops tending the fire, his body going still. “It’s not important.”  
“It is,” she says. Names are dangerous things, especially for those who go without. She should know.  
“Not this one,” he growls but it’s the fear in his voice that gives him away. A fear of himself, of what he wants. The flame inside of her flickers.  
“Speak his name and I will offer it up to the Red God-”  
“No,” he barks and stabs at the fire with more force than intended.  
“You want him dead,” she whispers. She is sure of it. It’s written in the lines of his face, in the guilt that keeps his eyes on the fire.  
“And you want a name,” he shakes his head, the flames coloring him red-orange. When he looks at her she can see the fire reflected in his eyes. “Sometimes all we are is wanting.”

 

That night, amidst a grove of felled weirwood trees she dreams of fire, of someone calling a name as molten rock rains down from the sky.  
She wakes just before the sun. Counts the trees again and this time comes up with twenty-eight.  
When Hawkeye wakes she tells him firmly, “Natasha.”  
His smile is brighter than the dawn. “Well met Natasha. My name is Clint.”

 

***

“How’d you do that?” He asks as she takes a seat beside him in the busy Inn. She’s just finished talking to a couple of Dornish traders, laughing with them and swapping stories about the water gardens. She’s learned many things; the most important being that there is fighting at the Ruby Ford. If they wish to cross they’ll have to do it at The Twins, which means if they wish to make the tourney in time they’ll need to find faster transport.  
“Do what?” She reaches to steal a piece of cheese from his bowl.  
“Talk like so many people. You’re Westerosi then you’re Braavosi, you’re Lyseni and Dornish, you’re fancy proper and then you’re plain common.” He watches her in a semi-drunken haze that’s spilling his secrets across his face and on his tongue. “Hell I think you could speak dragon to me if you wanted.”  
“To speak to you I’d have to speak fluent mule,” she counters and tries to warn him off with a glare. Clint just grins and takes another drink from his cup, pushing the rest of his food towards her. His eyes are soft and fond but there’s a question hiding in the shadows. “Natasha,” he says quietly, “how’d you do that?”  
It’s not a question she can answer, but she doesn’t lie either.  
“I was part of a mummer’s troupe.”  
“So was I and I didn’t learn none of that.”  
“It was a different mummer’s troupe.”  
“No doubt.”

In the morning he procures them two horses. His is a bedraggled thing missing one eye and a little lame in the back. He likes it though, whispers to it fondly when he thinks she’s not looking and names it Lucky. She does not name her horse.  
“It needs a name Nat,” he argues, his tone playful.  
“As does the Red God,” she says, watching as the words take the smile from his face. She has not asked, not for days now but she remembers her debts. “Names are dangerous things.”  
He nods solemnly, kicks his horse forward and begins their journey anew.  
She thinks about it as they ride, contemplates her own name, the one she chose. He could offer it up if he liked, if he wanted rid of her bad enough. But he doesn’t and he won’t.  
By nightfall she’s unsure if she gives in because it makes sense or because she simply doesn’t want the poor thing to be named something stupid like Lucky.  
“Liho,” she states before dismounting. He blinks and she explains. “It means unlucky in High Valyrian.”  
He laughs loudly, a sound that startles the birds in the trees. She huffs and walks the horse onward. He catches up and bumps her shoulder with his own, still laughing.

 

***

There is a man at the tourney with reddish brown hair. His eyes are a familiar shade of blue and there are truths on his skin that she has seen before. She has never met this man but she would be a fool not to recognize him. Something hot inside her chest twists and starts to push against her ribs. Clint has seen him too; she can hear it in his sharp intake of breath.  
“Speak his name and I will offer him to the Red God,” she whispers.  
He hears but doesn’t tear his eyes away from the man who was his brother. She can see the war play out across his face, in his shoulders, even in the harsh grip on his bow. She has always known violence lurks underneath but he has always been so controlled, like dragon’s breath. Right now he is a pot of wildfire waiting for a spark.  
“If I say his name you’d kill him?” He asks.  
“Yes.”  
“And then you’d leave, right?”  
“Yes,” she affirms, a heat pushing at her chest again and it feels almost painful. He finally looks at her and she sees a flame flicker across his face, beg for air and then disappear. He shoulders his bow.  
“Lets go get drunk.”

 

“You wanted him dead,” she says later.  
“Yeah,” he grunts in between mouthfuls of ale.  
“And now you don’t?”  
He sighs, stops his quest to drown himself in bad ale and then looks at her. He looks at her like he’s searching for something inside of her, as if there is something else in there other than flame and ash. It leaves him raw and open and she turns away rather than see the truth in his eyes.  
“Like I said, sometimes all we are is wanting.”

 

The tournament closes with Clint’s bow on his shoulder, every arrow still sharp in his quiver. He did not fire it once.

 

At night the Inn is full with the tourneys remaining revelers and so they huddle together against the cold on a straw pallet in the stable. The soft voices of a Pentoshi band carry on the wind. They sing in a language she has not heard for a very long time.

“What are they singing about?” Clint asks. He knows very little High Valyrian, understands even less the Pentoshi accent. She tells him.

“They sing about a war coming to the wall. About a Frost King who brings an army of ice soldiers and eternal winter.

They sing about a Captain from long ago, who fought only with a SHIELD. He held off the Others and was buried in the ice. He was buried in ice but he did not die. They say you can hear his heart beat in the wall on silent nights. He’s waiting for when he’s needed again.

A Man of Iron. Stronger than a dozen men, his red and gold armor is impenetrable. No sword or hammer or arrow can take him down.

A maester who was thrown from the Citadel for experimenting with potions. He’s a monster they say, full of rage with scales like a dragon and his eyes flash green.

“A God with a war hammer-”  
“That was the Baratheon,” Clint cuts in.  
“No, this one is built like a Baratheon but has the look of a Targaryen. All long blonde hair and pale skin. His hammer is so heavy only he can lift it.”

She listens to the dying chords of the song. Clint looks at her softly and says, “maybe one day they will sing a song for us?”  
“What would they sing about?”  
“A woman who could be a thousand people and an archer who looked at her and only ever saw one.”  
He is so close she can feel the heat of him, thinks she can feel the steady beating of his heart in his chest.  
She asks, “who do you see?”  
His smile is warm when he says, “I see Natasha.”

 

She belongs to the Red God but Natasha does not.

She takes him because she wants to. She _wants_ and she has not wanted in such a long, long time.

Is this what it is to be worshiped? His lips are on her skin sucking bruises into the hollow of her neck, the tops of her breasts. His hands are callused and greedy as they pull her closer. His body is hot like the fire that birthed her and everywhere he touches leaves her _wanting_. When she’s above him, bare to him in every way and he’s inside of her, inside of her skin, her eyes, inside of the place her heart should be; she thinks, is this what the Gods want? To feel like this, so powerful yet utterly devoid of it too.  
He whispers her name into her mouth, begging, praying for release. She gives in, bites his lip hard enough to draw blood so they may both taste the red she’s forever marked with. She belongs to the to the Red God, to the Lion of Night, the Black Goat and the Stranger. She belongs to a God of Many Faces but Natasha belongs to no one and she _wants_.

 

She dreams of a debt, of a king with a crown of ice and blue eyes that are not his. When she wakes he says, “we should go north.”  
He would have made a gallant knight, she thinks, with his sense of honor. It’s also why knighthood would not suit him.  
She shakes her head. “I had a dream, that your eyes were striking blue and you were not you.”  
“My eyes are blue and I’ve always been me.”  
No, she thinks, this was different. But the fire inside of her is burning and so she says, “okay, we’ll go north.”

 

***

They reach the wall. There is a man waiting for them at the gate. He is dressed all in black and is missing an eye.  
“Finally,” the Lord Commander says. “We’ve been waiting.”

 

***

The night before the battle she lays with Clint under the furs, feels his heartbeat race against her skin, thinks maybe if she presses them together tightly enough it could beat for her too. In the morning hours before dawn sees fit to break their peace, his fingers linger on the curve of her hip, her breast, her jaw. It feels sad and gentle, it feels like a goodbye and so she tells him so.  
He whispers, “I think your God will be very busy tomorrow.”  
“Yes but I won’t let him take you.”  
“No?” She can feel him smile against her cheek. “And what will you say to the God of Death when he comes for me?”  
She remembers her dreams, remembers the ice that takes over his eyes, that will freeze his heart in his chest. But she is ready; she is flame, and fire, and dragon’s breath.  
“Not today.”

 

***

This is like no war she’s ever seen before.  
There are thousands of the dead, half frozen creatures with too blue eyes.

The battlefield is engulfed by shadow as overhead flies a dragon made of ice, larger even than the sea beasts she’d spy from the towers of the Purple Harbor. It screams as it blocks out the sun and dives towards the wall. There is an eerie moment when the battlefield stills and watches it descend only to be met by the fist of the maester. He is the size of ten men, his skin covered in green scales and he roars as he tears the beast from the sky.

North of the wall, she dances. They are all there: the Maester, the Man of Iron, the Captain, the God with a war hammer and Clint. There is blood and ice on her sword but she cannot feel the cold. She is flame and fire and dragon’s breath.

 

It’s just a glimpse, just a moment on the battlefield when the bodies part and she can see Clint. The Frost King holds a hand to his throat, presses a glowing staff to his chest and then his eyes are the wrong blue.

She fights to make it to him with no care of whom she cuts down to get there.

When she reaches him he already has an arrow in his bow and fires.  
_She will not kill him._  
“Hawkeye!” She screams. She dodges the arrow, hears the string sing and then has barely a moment before he fires again.  
_She will not kill him, she will not kill him._  
“Clint!” She yells, but those eyes are ice; there is no warmth hiding in the depths. She ducks low to lash out at his knee. He catches her in the face with the back of his hand, sends her sprawling and then drives the point of an arrow down at her heart.  
_She will not kill him, she will not kill him._  
She rolls, punches him one, twice, tries for a third when his hands close around her throat. He pushes his weight down on top of her and she struggles against him.  
_She will not kill him. She will not. She will not._  
She knees him, pushes him off of her and scrambles back towards her sword. His hand grabs at her ankle. Her hands close around the hilt and she swings.  
_Not today._

 

***

In the aftermath they sit on the rubble of the wall, looking silently at the bodies burning below them. She leans her side against his but he does not lean back.  
“Clint. Clint Barton,” he whispers, his voice rough like stone on stone.  
“No.”  
“Please,” he begs and shakes his head. “The things I did…what I was…that’s my name. I name myself.”  
“No…I…” She can’t say it, not yet, not with the dragon’s breath still hot on her skin, the fire still burning inside of her. She owes a debt but… she _wants_. She _wants so much_. She wants to see him smile, she wants to see him shoot arrow after arrow after arrow, she wants him to say her name - the one she chose herself. She wants to laugh and lay in the spring sunshine picking out shapes in the clouds.  
She says instead, “all I am is wanting…”  
He looks at her softly with his own blue eyes. He leans against her, takes her bloodied hand in his and holds it tight.

 

**Author's Note:**

> This has been frustrating me for so long but sometimes you’ve got to let things go. All the mistakes are mine. I don’t own ASOIAF or Marvel, which is probably a good thing.


End file.
